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United States
Austin, a small green grain in the middle of the Texan desert
Writer: Cécile Bontron | Photographer: Guillaume CollangesAustin, the capital of Texas, has always been different. The smallest of the big American cities (900,000 inhabitants in the city itself, 2 million for Greater Austin) has chosen to focus on ecology in the state in Texas – the symbol of the all-powerful oil market. It has been able to convert this difference into an economic advantage: the city has become a major centre for green industry (also known as CleanTech) in the United States.
(Français) (Français) Team voiture solaire de l'Université d'Austin/Texas
- Audrey Fogarty, Vice-President of Younicos
Austin is a city that’s different to others. There’s an entrepreneurial culture that reigns there and a great deal of creativity, which is illustrated by the slogan that Austinites like to display on their t-shirts, bags and cars: «Keep Austin Weird”.
«Keep Austin Weird»
Austin has always been a pioneering city: it created the very first architectural certification system in 1990, Austin Green Building Program which obliges all buildings to meet minimum sustainable development criteria.
Today that experience is enabling it to develop new eco-neighbourhoods to cope with the strongest demographic growth in the United States. The city has its own publicly-owned electricity utility, Austin Energy, and was also the first customer of Texan wind farms. Today, 28% of the power produced is clean energy. The city has set itself a target of 35% by 2020. But this will be achieved without any difficulty in 2016. So it has decided to push for more: 55% by 2025.
Another challenge: to reduce its waste by 90% by 2040. This might seem to be a particularly complex challenge to meet, but in Austin, certain residents have already achieved it and several restaurants can already boast that they produce «zero waste». The ultimate aim today is to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- Steve Adler, Mayor of Austin
We have ambitious objectives for our energy, our waste, our greenhouse gas emissions… And at the same time, we are the fastest growing city in the United States. It’s an enormous challenge.»
The businessman who composts on his bike
Dustin Fedako is the archetypal product of Austin. This young man with his hipster look launched his own business in August 2012. A very special kind of business: it proposes to transform kitchen waste into compost, but without emitting a single gram of CO2. All the transport takes place by bike. Hence the name: «Compost Pedallers».
Juggling running a staff of 14, cleaning out waste buckets and attending marketing meetings, the young man is trialling a community-based economic model, whose development is necessarily slow: he needs pairs of legs to pedal, community gardens and farms to compost, local shops to set up a reward scheme (or a points system) based on the weight of waste sorted. No meteoric growth, but a company that nevertheless already has 650 private customers as well as 50 companies; and 14 employees whereas there were only 3, three years ago; and dozens of cities in Latin America and Asia are very interested by the concept.
Dustin Fedako has designed a collection service for household waste and environmentally- friendly composting, with transportation being carried out uniquely by bike. The compost is used by urban farms and communal gardens, and clients are rewarded with points, to be used in local shops and services: an economy on a community scale.
At the forefront of CleanTech
Green industry is booming in Austin. Almost 20,000 people work in solar energy, biogas, wind power, energy storage, electric vehicles, waste recycling and even organic farming.
This sector now represents $2.5 billion (€2.29 billion) of turnover. Such rapid development is not down to chance: Austin, home to Dell, has become a major high-tech centre inthe United States. At the University of Texas in Austin, already renowned for its «high- tech industry» specialisations, over a thousand students take a CleanTech-related course every year. The university is also home to the Unites States’ very first «Clean Energy» business incubator. It is also the most important campus in the United States for research in the energy field (including oil). The university, which sees itself as being in the vanguard of the CleanTech sector, helps to maintain a continuous dynamic in this branch in the Texan capital.
